The Story of the Boy Ahmad Shawqi Abu Zayd (4)

A psychological shock after the disaster of the "Abu Ali" flood robs him of hearing and speech

Psychological treatment restores them... and the boy loses his memory!!

The story concludes in this issue

– 4 –

The problem in brief: In the last issue we left Ahmad in a state of turmoil and anxiety. He had fled from the Dawudiyya College in Abey when no more than a month had passed since his enrollment there... When he was searched for, he was found at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, the government hospital in Beirut, and the Red Cross social worker hastened to his aid with the nurse Nihad Ghantous of Tripoli, who had taken great interest in Ahmad's case. Everyone was seized with anxiety over the fate of this youth, and they feared he might be swept into a life of vagrancy with the "night rats," the vagrant boys of his own age...

Where was Ahmad?... It appears that after his flight from the Dawudiyya, one of the nervous fits that struck him at times and left him as one bereft of his senses came over him in the street; and naturally, whoever found him unconscious in the street would carry him to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. At the hospital they revived him with stimulants, and when he came to he asked to return to Renée Arman; but they, following the rules, sent him under guard to the district police post so that a report could be drawn up on the matter. At the post Ahmad claimed that he had lost the two liras that had been in his pocket, and since there was no further need to hold him and there was no charge against him, he was released after his statement had been briefly recorded... And so, when the Red Cross social worker arrived at the post with Nihad Ghantous, Ahmad had left about a quarter of an hour earlier, and no one could say where he was staying or where he had gone — and everyone's mind was troubled over him.

His reappearance a week later: The telephone rang in Miss Arman's house, a week after this incident, and on the line was none other than Ahmad! He spoke to her, asked after her, and told her he had gone back to the Dawudiyya... He met her at the Red Cross office, and Renée doubted the truth of what he said, noticing a certain trickery in his conduct and fabrication and lying in his talk — especially after she telephoned the Dawudiyya College in Abey and they denied having seen Ahmad or heard his voice since his flight a week before...

The Islamic College of Education and Instruction in Tripoli: The people of the Islamic Orphanage in Tripoli, and the head of the municipal police department there, had never ceased inquiring about him and asking for him. So when Miss Arman had satisfied herself of Ahmad's game-playing and his failure to keep discipline — and she had wearied of pursuing him and watching over him to no avail — when this situation appeared to her in all its aspects, she put him in the Red Cross car and took him to Tripoli to study at the Islamic College of Education and Instruction, sleeping at the orphanage... At the college the administration accepted him on trial, on condition that it bear no responsibility if any waywardness appeared in him, or if he fled as before...

Ahmad flees again: Those concerned with Ahmad's case thought he had at last found safety, stability, and care; but his stay at the College of Education in Tripoli did not exceed one single day! On the second day the telephone rang in Miss Arman's house, and there was her brother telling her: Ahmad is here with him, weeping and wanting to beg

her forgiveness. She refused flatly to see him, and instructed her brother to give him a few coins and send him at once to Mr. Adnan al-Hakim, to remain in the custody of the Najjadeh House...

Twenty days at the Najjadeh House:
And so Ahmad gathered up his clothes and went — obediently — to the Najjadeh House. The reports in his personal file there indicate that his conduct did not show that he had settled down and made his peace with his final lot... His eye and his heart were forever fixed on the shadowy unknown... And he would bargain over the clothes with which the Red Cross had outfitted him, selling them piece by piece to buy — what, if not "Lucky Strike" cigarettes! Is smoking not early for a boy of sixteen?!...
The administration tried to restrain him and bring him to abide by the rules, to keep clear of boyish infractions, and to follow the path of honesty, diligence, and uprightness — but in vain. How easily Ahmad invented a lie, how lightly he concocted tall tales and played his tricks; and there he stayed, eating, drinking, and lodged... yet without ease in the atmosphere or resignation to the situation...

On the Jordanian border: One day they missed him at the Najjadeh House and could not find him. No doubt he had by now been schooled in flight and had grown more accomplished in its arts and methods... This time his imagination carried him farther than usual... and there was the security police on the Jordanian border, arresting him as a fugitive without a passport... Perhaps he was casting his last arrow, playing his last card, in the search for his family; for he burned fiercely to return to the family nest, in the care of his mother and father and among his brothers, and he had wearied of moving from one setting to another, and resolved to do the impossible to be reunited with them. He could not believe that their final disappearance from his life was something that could really happen!... With this burning longing in his breast, Ahmad went chasing after the unknown — he wanted his parents!...

The Father Kortbawi Institution is the answer:
At this stage Ahmad got in touch with Radio Lebanon and asked its help in searching for his family, and he implored the writer of this story to help him build his life anew — "I want to learn an honorable trade that will secure me a decent living"... After long thought she found the only fitting solution in the Father Kortbawi Institution — that humanitarian institution unique of its kind in the Arab East, which shelters boys and girls, secures for them the mastery of a trade, and gives them strong moral guidance...

So the writer of this story went to Father Kortbawi and told him Ahmad's tale from its beginning to its end, laid before him the fears and forebodings stirring in her breast, as a mother, and implored him to take Ahmad into the fold of his institution... And the generous humanitarian promised to accept Ahmad, and agreed to add him to the institution's family.

Ahmad disobeys and rebels: She thanked him warmly, and he was moved... She hurried off in search of Ahmad, to bring him the news of her success in what he had wanted and to give him the glad tidings that from that day on a warm nest and a reassuring brotherly atmosphere would be his... to make up for the deprivation and loneliness he had suffered. She enlisted the help of Miss Arman, who had been following Ahmad's steps from afar, trying to guide him and help him lest he fall into the pitfalls strewn everywhere around him... on the port!...
Ahmad dallied when the news reached him that Father Kortbawi was ready to take him at once. The reason for his dallying was that by this time he had begun taking on the various jobs on the port that call for young hands — portering and cleaning — all of it tiring and grueling — but Ahmad needed the four liras a day — and his growing used to this work, and the rise in his daily wage, increased his desire.

The end of Ahmad's story: From time to time he would telephone Miss Arman, seeking her approval and giving her the latest news; she would scold him for not coming, and assure him that he was in error to refuse this excellent place at the Father Kortbawi Institution, which would open before him the doors of hope for an honorable future... And he would promise her he was coming tomorrow... and always fail to appear... inventing flimsy excuses... until at last he came to her saying: he was working on an Egyptian ship and earning twelve liras a day!
There may be some exaggeration in the figure Ahmad claimed, but there is no doubt that these large wages, granted him after his long deprivation, tempted him to stay on the port for good — especially since he had managed, with the help of Mr. Rida al-Tamir, to obtain an identity card, and so the last obstacle was removed from the path of his setting out in life as a man...

This is the end of the story of Ahmad Shawqi Abu Zayd — he is now a roving sailor on the deck of an Egyptian ship, pleased with his lot, happy among his sailor comrades... And whenever his ship returns to the port of Beirut, he will surely get in touch with Miss Arman, and may visit her bearing a precious gift from a distant land... for he does not forget her, nor does he forget the tenderness she spent on his behalf in the days when he was in dire need of tenderness!